India a bridging power in many ways: Jaishankar

India's External Affairs Minister emphasizes India's role as a bridging power in global multilateralism and national interests.

India is a bridging power in many ways, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said on Thursday, while stating that multilateralism would exist side by side with national interests. In this regard, he stated that just after Independence India put “trust” in multilateralism and took the “Kashmir aggression” issue to the United Nations (UN) and others made it into an “accession issue” for geopolitical reasons.

“Very literally in our first year of Independence, we put our trust on multilateralism and took the Kashmir aggression issue to the UN and others made it into an accession issue. And they did it for geopolitical reasons. The fact is that if you say they are playing multilateralism, they always did. We have grown up,” Mr. Jaishankar said, speaking at the Raisina Dialogue jointly organised by the Ministry of External Affairs and the Observer Research Foundation.

He was speaking in a panel themed ‘A Tapestry of Truths: Can the Two Hemispheres Agree?’ along with his counterparts from Netherlands Hanke Bruins Slot and January Yusuf Makamba from Tanzania; Jorge Quiroga, former President, Bolivia; and Anwar bin Mohammed Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the President of United Arab Emirates.

Further, he said it was not like we should be against multilateralism which was a kind of lowest common denominator and anything above that. “It will exist side by side with national interests, with the calculations and competitions... But I also agree... that there is a place for sentiment, for solidarity... At different levels we shouldn’t make it exclusive,” Mr. Jaishankar stated. “India can also help the world by offering solutions from our own examples and digital would be the most appropriate.”

Calling India a bridging power, Mr. Jaishankar said whether it is COVID or today’s regional conflicts, people would see India as relatively objective and unbiased. “At least to the extent we can get common ground we should strive for common ground even though it will never be perfect,” he said. “A lot of what India is trying to do, there are different names, but the idea of a multi-vector policy what in our language what we call Vishvamitra, which is like a friend of the world, you will maximise your relationships, that is the direction we are trying to take ourselves and take the world.”

Terming the countries of Africa as the ‘Southern global South’, Tanzanian Foreign Minister Mr. Makamba said they did not think the current global system worked for them. “We see lot of hypocrisy in the way we deal with international issues that concern us. We see double standards. There is tremendous mistrust in the global economic and political architecture.”

Talking of the UN Security Council reform, the External Affairs Minister said when the UN came into being, it had approximately 50 members and today there were four times the members. So, it was a common-sense proposition that you could not continue the same way when you have four times the members, Mr. Jaishankar said. “In many cases, the rules have been gamed. We speak about globalisation. The fact is that the world trading rules have been gamed. And we have a lot of our challenges today also emanate from how countries have used that for their benefit at the expense of the international system,” he said, adding, “The biggest opposers to UNSC reforms is not a western country.”